Author: TravellinPenguin

It was another fairly busy week but I did have a few bookish things going on.

 One book launch, one library book, one audible book in progress and one kindle book for book club in progress.

 In life I had three gym sessions which were quite hard going after being away from the gym for almost six weeks. Monday Pilates, Wednesday training and Saturday 50 minutes of a slow jog on a treadmill at the gym. It felt good and I need to lose the couple of kgs I gained by travelling and then getting sick. Tomorrow will have me back there. It is also such a social place so I do enjoy going there.

 The book launch was in the café at Fullers Book shop and we had Danielle Wood interviewing Markus Zusak about his book Three Wild Dogs and the Truth.

 It was lots of fun as Markus has the best sense of humour and he had everyone laughing quite a bit at these crazy, big dogs he adopted from the pound. He doesn’t believe in the term “rescue”. They are simply pound dogs.

They are also awful dogs. Naughty dogs. They killed a possum, attacked his plumber, bit the piano teacher. I think there were more than a few raised eye brows in the room at his laughter at these really suspect dogs. They are big dogs too but he certainly loves them. Personally I have a problem with big aggressive dogs in households with children but I guess you’ll have to read his book to see what his own pet philosophy is. I won’t even mention what happened to the family cat.

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 The Kindle book I’m reading is Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. It has been slow going. Good Reads describes it as:

‘”The New York Trilogy is the most astonishing work by America’s most consistently astonishing writer: three interconnected novels that exploit the riveting elements of classic detective fiction to achieve a radical new genre – a profound and unsettling existentialist enquiry in the tradition of Kafka or Borges. In each story the search for clues leads to remarkable coincidences in the universe as the simple act of trailing a man ultimately becomes a startling investigation of what it means to be human. The result is the modern novel at its finest which will shock, transfix and astound every reader.”

It should be an interesting discussion in November.

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The Audible book I’m listening to is Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang. Narrated by Helen Laser.

It is the story of two women writers. One is much more successful than the other and the less successful one is quite envious of the successful one.

 One day the two women are having lunch together and the successful author has finished her latest manuscript and is getting ready to send it off for publishing. It’s set to go.

 However as the lunch progresses ‘Successful author’ chokes on her lunch and dies. This is all in the first few pages. ‘Less successful’ author gets the idea to take the manuscript and turn it in as her own. She does this and the story takes off from there.

What is interesting though is the ‘successful author’ is Asian and there are a lot of Chinese references and mandarin language references. ‘Less successful’ author is not. The manuscript gets accepted however the fact checking now must begin as the publishers want to make sure they don’t publish the book with errors from the non Asian author. The book tours are being organised.

Publishers are really cracking down on those writers who write outside of their culture. This should be a roller coaster ride.

I also picked up a beautiful photography book from the library but I will do a separate post on it as this one is long enough.

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In other life news- photography has been a bit slow but I have put a few new photos up on Instagram (Here) of a couple photos from Cambodia.

 There is a photo club excursion coming up this coming week but I have a specialist appointment and cannot attend. Such a shame as it is a beautiful, private garden south of here. It looks beautiful. Maybe another time.

Peanny and Ollie are doing well. They are loving the warmer, sunny days of spring and love their runs after the postie bike from front yard to back yard and the rubbish trucks on Wednesday.  The road we live on winds past the front of our home and then around a curve and past the back of our yard. The dogs start in the front corner and run as fast as they can go to get to the back gate so they can see the motorbike and the rubbish trucks twice. It is very funny to watch. I am glad we have big, strong fences.

All the best to you for the coming week and I’ll leave you with Penguin’s look of the week.

The Penguin and I have had a very bookish week and it is about to continue.

Wednesday was book club. The Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima. The tale of a young man during the mid 1940s war time in Japan coming to terms with his conflict between his homosexuality and the love of a woman who he felt no attraction for but could give him a family life. The discussion we had amongst our 6 members, (2 women, 4 men) was really interesting. He dealt with so many mental conflicts. We all got a lot out of this Penguin Modern Classic.

Thursday evening had us at the Hobart Town Hall for the launch of Robbie Arnott’s book Dusk.. He was interviewed by the wonderful Rachel Edwards. Rachel is a content maker with ABC Hobart. She has worked as a publisher and editor and most recently she has been producing the ABC Hobart Breakfast program and also works with Transportation Press in Tasmania. It was a full house as Tasmanians definitely claim Robbie as one of our own.

Locations in the book are not mentioned but it is based on the highlands of Tasmania. Robbie said the area is one he remembered spending time in as a child.

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Today was Love Your Bookshop Day across Australia. I went down to Fullers first thing this morning as Penguin had a deal going I wanted to participate with. Buy two Penguin books and receive a small boxed figurine of a Penguin. I really like Penguin ephemera and still have some from when I was collecting their vintage books.

I also wanted to see if by chance I came across the hidden Golden Ticket which gave the finder 12 months of free Libro Audio books. I didn’t find the golden ticket; it was found by another, but I did get two of the Penguins I’ve had my eye on for a while. I also picked up a Japanese book I’d ordered a few days ago. The boxed penguin is cute but small.

I can’t wait to read of the musings between a Japanese woman and her cat who she shares 20 yrs of her life with.

It is good to support the bookshops on their special days and I understand from a later fb post that they did quite a trade.

Monday evening we will once again be at Fullers for

I am currently listening to this on Audible.

What it’s about…

I am really looking forward to our free glass of wine and book launch interview all for $10.00.

Have you had any unusual or exceptional bookish experiences this week?

Let our little Tassie Penguin know. Until next time🌻

PS The Penguin is getting a bit of an upgrade in future months. He will be integrated more into the theme of the life posts of reading, travelling and taking photographs.

We have returned from our cruise down the Mekong in Cambodia and Vietnam then a week long recovery period at a lovely hotel.

It was really interesting and fun. One of the more interesting excursions was visiting the facility that trains these big African rats how to sniff out the Cambodian land mines scattered throughout Cambodia in the thousands left from the days of war. We saw how they are trained and how they work and got to hold one. They are trained similarly to the customs and airport dogs. They have saved thousands of lives.

I know! Rats but they were very domesticated, soft and gentle. The trainers were very strict as to how we held them.

We enjoyed a lot of food and drink and made new friends which was fun. But always good to be home.

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We had to have a little talk with our dog Ollie. He is always glad to go to the vets as he loves the girls there. They really fuss over him. He gets so excited he often has a little wee.

So we are sitting in Saigon about to go to the airport to fly to DaNang and we get a message the kennel hand has rung and Ollie has a bit of an upset tummy and is off his food. And is this normal? Of course they transport him to the vet. Of course all the girls are there. Of course he got his own way and is socialising non stop- as he does. He had a bit of gastro, probably from his change in diet. He gets checked over, stays overnight for observation. Next morning, all his girls are there. My good friend is the vet and she sends text he is pretty much swanning around wagging his tail, socialising with everyone, before the kennel hand picks him up and tales him back. Of course there is a $50.00 transport fee each way.

When we got home I asked him if he was just faking it. He looked straight at me and wagged his tail. You tell me! We noticed he didn’t require any medications.

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I finished the book Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout. Olive Kitteridge is in it at age 90 now. I enjoyed the book. A good holiday read but felt it wasn’t the best of her work. I kind of felt Olive was in it here and there as well as the other characters from her previous books to kind of stretch out the series. But like I said I did enjoy it though Lucy Barton annoyed me a couple of times. The plot wasn’t overly strong but it was ok and an easy read.

I am currently reading a very short Japanese book for book club next week. Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima. Published in 1949, my copy is a 2017 Penguin Modern Classic.

The dawning of a young man’s homosexual and sadistic desires

A Japanese teenager is overcome with longing for his male classmate. Each night he imagines his body punctured with arrows, like the body of St Sebastian in Guido Reni’s painting; the objects of our hero’s desire are tortured, killed and maimed, over and over again each night in his private fantasies. He must hide his lust from a homophobic and stiflingly conventional Japan. Self-loathing and desperate, he begins acting out a love affair with the sister of a school friend, while grappling with his hidden desires under the shadow of a Japan under threat from WorldWar Two.

I have to say I’m struggling with it a bit but it is short and for book club so I will finish it. The writing is very good but I don’t have a lot of interest in the subject. But I am interested in how this young lad progresses.

Well this is long enough. I am glad to be home and back to normal activities. I started back at the gym today and no doubt will be sore tomorrow but I gained almost 2 kgs on the trip. Too much cold beer in a tropical hot climate and way too many desserts and other wonderful food on the ship and at our follow up hotel . So food austerity is the plan for a couple of weeks. Ha!

All the best to everyone this week.